Gillard plays the abortion card

Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Tuesday . . . ‘We don’t want to live in an Australia where abortion again becomes the political plaything of men who think they know better’.
Photo: AAP

by
Phillip Coorey | Claire Stewart

A defiant
Julia Gillard
has drawn on gender to shore up her support by claiming polling day looms as a choice on whether to banish women’s voices from political life and make abortion the “political plaything of men".

With Labor lagging the Coalition badly in the polls and her leadership again under pressure, the Prime Minister played the gender card, telling a Women for Gillard launch that
Tony Abbott
, if elected, would clamp down on abortion.

“We don’t want to live in an Australia where abortion again becomes the political plaything of men who think they know better,’’ she said.

“On [election] day, September 14, we are going to make a big decision as a nation. It’s a decision about whether, once again, we will banish women’s voices from our political life.’’

AFR
AFR

The speech’s gender pitch, her strongest since her misogyny attack on Mr Abbott in October, was widely ­construed as a warning against a return to
Kevin Rudd
, as much as electing Mr Abbott.

Related Quotes

Company Profile

Social commentator Jane Caro said it smacked of desperation and could blow up in the Prime Minister’s face. It raised eyebrows within Labor, with some MPs believing the Prime Minister had “jumped the shark".

Coalition women described the comments as desperate and offensive. Even one Labor MP,
Stephen Jones
, said he was surprised by Ms Gillard’s pitch.

He stressed he supported a woman’s right to choose but “I am not convinced of the wisdom of kicking this into a political debate’’.

In her speech, Ms Gillard listed the array of social and female-friendly ­policies Labor had introduced. She ­denigrated the concept of the country being run by “a man in a blue tie who goes on holidays to be replaced by a man in a blue tie’’.

“Women, once again, [are] banished from the centre of Australian political life,’’ she said.

Ms Gillard likened her immediate challenge to the women’s equality ­battles fought by the suffragettes and the 1970s feminist movement.

Abortion claims ‘offensive’

“To the commentators and the pollsters, there’s always a moment in every fight where you’ve got to choose whether you are daunted by it or ­energised by it,’’ she said.

Deputy opposition leader
Julie Bishop
said Ms Gillard’s claims on abortion were not only wrong but offensive, and that Ms Gillard should apologise.

“A desperate Prime Minister leading a bitterly divided pa­rty is resorting to the base politics of fear and division. We are a better nation than this and Australia deserves leadership,’’ she said.

“The Prime Minister should be ­governing for all Australians, not trying to divide the community as a distraction from her political woes.’’

In contrast to the message in her speech Ms Gillard, at an earlier press conference, endorsed Victorian senator
David Feeney
as the preferred candidate to replace
Martin Ferguson
in the Melbourne seat of Batman.

This ignored the urging of high-profile ALP women, such as
Jenny Macklin
, for a woman to be chosen. Senator Feeney is facing off against
Mary-Anne Thomas
.

Ms Gillard needs the support of ­Senator Feeney and his fellow Victorian power-brokers,
Bill Shorten
and
Stephen Conroy
, to ward off any challenge from Mr Rudd that may occur when Parliament resumes next week for its final fortnight.

Shorten under pressure

In her first public comments since the leadership issue flared at the weekend, Ms Gillard, out pushing her Gonski school funding reforms, said “I am the best person to lead the Labor Party’’.

“A breath spent on that speculation or rumour-mongering is a breath that isn’t spent on putting the case for improving our schools for our kids,’’ she said.

With Mr Shorten under pressure to abandon his support for Ms Gillard and tap her on the shoulder, the Prime ­Minister indicated this would be a waste of time even if he did so.

She said under no circumstances would she not lead Labor to the next election.

She said the broader playing of the gender card “feels like a political tactic rather than a statement of real belief’’.

“I’m more prepared to believe her on education and Gonski than I am on this. And I’m worried it will create this very idea that we don’t want, which is that women in politics only represent women. We want women in politics because we want the brightest and the best of all available people.’’

University of Technology, Sydney, professorial fellow Eva Cox said voters shouldn’t be swayed by politics that uses gender to rally votes.

“This strikes me as part of continuing to push the misogyny thing,’’ she said. “If women want to vote for Julia, they should do it based on the policies that both parties are putting up, not on the possibility that there might be something on abortions, given the ­federal government control in that area is minimal."

Unclear about attracting female voters

Ms Cox said pointers about the Labor government’s policy position on women were more apparent in decisions to shift the sole parent payment to the much lower Newstart allowance payment.

But she said the Prime Minister’s decision, along with then health ­minister Nicola Roxon, to “put decisions about medicines essential for women’s health on an evidential footing", was a step forward.

“As health minister, Tony Abbott, with the active political support of a number of the men who are likely to wield positions of power in the next government, persistently agitated to restrict women’s access to abortion, to stigmatise the procedure and to shame the women and healthcare workers involved in it," she said.